Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

the importance of qualitative experience-oriented, and contextual research in the
early concept design stages.
These concepts could be prototyped and placed in a community for a time
to see how they become adopted. This may require a long term co-operation
commitment from the designers. It often happens that the results of a research
project are prototyped and tested in a community, but then taken away, as in
the projects Living Memory [11] and Presence [7,8]. The final sign of success
for a community concept is that it remains actively used and maintained even
after the designers pack up and go home.
CONCLUSIONS
In our designs for the intimate city we have tried to combine the unique physical
characteristics of the city environment with the communication and media possibilities
that modern ICT can provide. The piazza, the streets and the city walls
merely receive new furniture. By breathing new function-ality and meaning of
life into and around these spaces, we support interactions that can be not only
intimate between individuals, but also supporting the community as a whole.
The call for interaction design is to learn from the different social needs
that people have and incorporate them into the design: to provide interaction
that is playful, respectful and intimate in reflection of its content. This kind of
understanding would have wide applications ranging from personal services,
designed environments, inclusive design and teleworking while most importantly
promoting the under-standing of people as social beings who need a
community, and need to feel part of and take part in it, regardless of age, gender
or other aspect.
“The form of social space is encounter, assembly, simultaneity … Social
space implies actual or potential assembly at a single point, or
around that point” [14]
190 4 PRESENTING THE ARTICLES
These new intimate ICT-products have the potential of becoming such points
around which life proliferates. Among benches, potted rose bushes, drinking
fountains and cafe tables we want these new products to become placeholders
for community life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to heartily thank the organisers of the i3 summer school:
Gillian Crampton-Smith, Giorgio De Michelis, Riccardo Antonini, of course also